A decade or so ago someone gave me several varieties of iris that had been bred for their diamond dust and they were stunning!! I would think this would be a trait worth going after but I never hear about it. Is there a reason it's not being used more? Are there one or two iris that are famous for their diamond dust?

It's a magical component of many Irises, Patty. I have some wonderful photos taken the year before last that shows diamond dusting on a variety of mine. Didn't even know about such a thing til it showed up in my pictures. I'll try to find time to post a few here in a day or two.

Patty -- go to my thread from today about Irises in my 2013 garden. On the first page, there are photos of *Magical* and *Black Magic Woman*. If you enlarge those, you'll see diamond dusting on both the standards and falls of Magical, and on the dark standards of BMW.

If the Iris has diamond dusting, and you photograph it in the sun, that's when you'll see it!

I see it on all of them so... Is this a trait that just crops up, or is it one you have to try to cross for? If you kept crossing for it would it possibly get thicker? It seems like the ones I had had a pretty thick layer of it. I'm going to try my hand at making some crosses this year, and this is something I would like to tinker with.